08-30-2009, 04:30 PM
Aye, was a great trip! Yeah Zara you'd hate to see the fuel bills heheh but we was on a shared plan 
Wished we had more time to spend out in mountain country, Az truly lives in a beautiful part of the country. That cool mountain air out on his porch was sure refreshing after the several hour trip over em heheh I was halfway expectin to see a graul come up out of them woods, or even a Janta or two. But Az reassured me he'd been taking care of those kind things so... ;D
To expand a little bit on Kimball... we were on the west side of Laramie right at sunset so was crossing that final range at cheyenne shortly after dark, Kimball is not far east from there and was our planned fuel stop.
It's a small untowered field, so I kicked up the runway lights a ways out to get a fix. Their weather reporting equipment was broadcasting a 13 knot wind from the SE, runway is SE slightly also, so no big deal.
Well as we got closer I noticed I had to keep a large amount of crab angle (angle of the plane into the wind) to keep centered on the runway, which meant no way in heck was that weather reporting correct... it was more like 35 knots from the S LOL
No problem, bigger crosswind is manageable, I just adjusted accordingly and lined her up. Well we got about oh maybe 40 feet off the deck at end of runway and the runway lights shut off pretty much leaving us with a black windshield, and landing light illuminating the wheat field beside the runway as I still had that 50 degree crab angle in the plane. Well hand went on the throttle getting ready to go around, and some rapid fire on the comm to get the lights back on.
Lights came back on just as I was about to go around and we'd drifted off center over the grass, pulled it back over and kicked in full rudder for a nice smooth crosswind landing.
We was never in any danger, it was just one of those WTF moments and a bit of excitement. Az had visions of the movie Airplane! where gay John unplugged the runway lights and said "just kidding". So we was kinda lookin around the airport for him, nobody around though.
Then of course came time to fuel up... thats a whole nother story almost. The pumps were credit card enabled but ancient system. At first try the pump shut off before we had time to get the hose up onto the wing. Tried it again, and it auto shut off after $50 (apparently only pre-approves 50 at a time). So we thought ok same guy on the lights runs these pumps LOL
All in all though was a stop we will never forget, one of those had to be there things heheheh
Wished we had more time to spend out in mountain country, Az truly lives in a beautiful part of the country. That cool mountain air out on his porch was sure refreshing after the several hour trip over em heheh I was halfway expectin to see a graul come up out of them woods, or even a Janta or two. But Az reassured me he'd been taking care of those kind things so... ;D
To expand a little bit on Kimball... we were on the west side of Laramie right at sunset so was crossing that final range at cheyenne shortly after dark, Kimball is not far east from there and was our planned fuel stop.
It's a small untowered field, so I kicked up the runway lights a ways out to get a fix. Their weather reporting equipment was broadcasting a 13 knot wind from the SE, runway is SE slightly also, so no big deal.
Well as we got closer I noticed I had to keep a large amount of crab angle (angle of the plane into the wind) to keep centered on the runway, which meant no way in heck was that weather reporting correct... it was more like 35 knots from the S LOL
No problem, bigger crosswind is manageable, I just adjusted accordingly and lined her up. Well we got about oh maybe 40 feet off the deck at end of runway and the runway lights shut off pretty much leaving us with a black windshield, and landing light illuminating the wheat field beside the runway as I still had that 50 degree crab angle in the plane. Well hand went on the throttle getting ready to go around, and some rapid fire on the comm to get the lights back on.
Lights came back on just as I was about to go around and we'd drifted off center over the grass, pulled it back over and kicked in full rudder for a nice smooth crosswind landing.
We was never in any danger, it was just one of those WTF moments and a bit of excitement. Az had visions of the movie Airplane! where gay John unplugged the runway lights and said "just kidding". So we was kinda lookin around the airport for him, nobody around though.
Then of course came time to fuel up... thats a whole nother story almost. The pumps were credit card enabled but ancient system. At first try the pump shut off before we had time to get the hose up onto the wing. Tried it again, and it auto shut off after $50 (apparently only pre-approves 50 at a time). So we thought ok same guy on the lights runs these pumps LOL
All in all though was a stop we will never forget, one of those had to be there things heheheh
Rebel parts... Imperial parts... All Made on Tatooine!!!